This week we played out a 16th century Scots and English battle using Anthony's really lovely Wofun miniatures flats. I've always been a fan of Peter Dennis' artwork and his paper soldiers (lots of posts elsewhere on the blog about this and my Jacobite and Ancient armies) but these take that concept and elevate it using some neat plexiglass templates. The figures look great and the colours really 'pop'. No painting required, or cutting out if you've gone down the paper soldier route (although I did find that quite therapeutic). I must admit I spent rather too long going through the Wofun website after I got home from our game!
Our game pitched 3 Scots pike blocks against English blocks of combine Bows and Bills/Men at Arms. The English also had a couple of light guns and some Border Horse. The Scots artillery was some very impressive heavy guns but these were fixed in place so their targets were a bit limited and their fire rate was slower than the lighter English guns. We used Andy Callan's Flodden rules which are available for free on the Wofun website. I'm not sure when these were developed but I'm pretty sure they pre-date Never Mind the Billhooks, but you can see lots of Billhooks elements in them. The rules were good and very appropriate to the setting but I think Billhooks has removed some of the 'fiddliness' from them.
Not surprisingly I took the Scots side and decided not to hang about, but to press on across the table and hopefully survive the arrowstorm from the waiting archers on the English left. Movement isn't guaranteed each turn, and both of us had units refuse to budge at critical moments.
Somehow the arrows proved surprisingly ineffective but the artillery on both sides did a lot of damage... even more surprisingly none of the guns exploded! 2 of my blocks were equipped with Pavises which helped, and we were able to ditch them before hand to hand started (when they would have been a bit of a hindrance for the Scots). 2 of my Pike blocks crashed into the English: the waiting archers slipped to the back of the blocks after loosing a final volley, and the pikemen and billmen fought it out. The fighting on this flank went of for several turns with the English eventually losing 1 of their combined blocks.
On the other flank things weren't going so well for the Scots. My Highland Pikemen were trying to close with another English Archer/Billmen block but a combination of archery and especially artillery fire meant they fell below half-strength, meaning they could no longer attack. My guns had inflicted the same result on one of the English blocks meaning both sides milled about ineffectively, and were both a prime target for artillery and archers. I almost broke the weakened English block with artillery fire (aren't so many games full of 'almost' moments!) before my guns were overrun by the Border Horse, but the Archers and Billmen managed to hang on, and his remaining effective unit of archers finished off the Highlanders, leaving a pile of tartan pincushions on the field and handing a close victory to the English (boooo!)
A close run thing but very enjoyable. I was very lucky not to have taken a lot more damage from the archers. We did discuss maybe trying the game again at some point with Billhooks to see if the more recent rules make a difference.
And, finally, here is Clan Chieftan McLeonard in full regalia who failed to turn up for the fight (probably quite sensibly given how most Scots/English battles went in this period). He's definitely Scottish... he couldn't be more Ginger!
